Do the British honestly believe that without the US the Nazi's could have been defeated?

nosdda

In 1940 the only thing that stood between britain being invaded by germany was the RAF. After Dunkirk, we had no serviceble Army. No armament or material to repel germany. People lived on starvation rations. Without the American Aid awe could not have survived a German invasion. We could never have made the DDay landings without the American troops and equipment. The American troops on DDay had the toughest beaches to land on. and took very heavy casualties. I knew the Americans when they were here and I will never forget their generosity to the British people during the war, and afterwards.

Jon Soundman

That's what I like to see, up to the minute topical debate.

barnowl

It was the "Ruskies" who saved our skin.

ben c

even with the yanks the war was pretty stretched. hitlers mistake was taking on the russians and stretching his resourses. coming in late and declaring victory is a very american thing to do. its a team effort.

semisatanic1

It was a world war!
Nobody won it on their own nor did they save anyone from anybody else!
We will never know whether we would have won the war without the yanks but we do know the Yanks did not enter it as a rescue mission!
I think most Brits will agree the Yanks made the job a lot easier but we really do get fed up with all this talk about how they saved us from the Germans!

Stephen

As Lord Halifax put it, Britain was virtually Bankrupt and while the USA held little prospect for our chances of survival. Hitler himself expected Britain to capitulate,although our dearest Prime Minister Mr Churchill was indeed elated if not estatic when old Uncle Sam entered the War but did not fail to observe at the time "Britain was being flayed to the bone " under the Lend Lease Agreement.
It would be difficult to envisage how the War would have developed without American intervention, but we still had our Finest Hour.

S P

Britain won its own war against Germany the summer and autumn of 1940, in the Battle of Britain.

America didnt declare war on Germany until, what, December 1941 or something like that?

Yes America played a huge role in the liberation of occupied continental Europe, but wasnt in the war when Britain was defending itself successfully.

budding author

! understand your question and you are correct of course , the British could not have won the war without the intervention of the Americans. (I am also British)
I also resent this ' lend lease' thing, but without it we would have been lost.
I also agree that it was at the end of the day an allied victory , obviously not enough empathise has been placed on the Russian contribution which I think really resolved the whole war thing, in fact they were the main cause of the allies winning the war.
Not the 'in thing' to praise the Russians is it?
As for you finding the British attitude 'incredible' I don't understand you not at least trying to weigh that up, the Brits are really just as nationalistic as the Americans, and just as capitalistic!
So in all truth we & you (the Brits) dont rerally think we could have won the battle without the allies, but of course we are not going to admit that are we?
Just as a matter of interest have you every read 'The rise and fall of the third reich' by William Shirer. a great book I have read it dozens of times, its great. sad really isnt it) I'll be buying an anorack next!!

bellyman

OK OK without the yanks we might have fallen or we might of had to talk about peace, as the Germans were not going to invade anyway as we had beat them in the air and they had missed they chance to get across... plus changing tactics like the Germans did helped us out big time.....
so yes without the yanks and the Russian as well we might of had to given up down the line but we would of held out for as long as we could.....
plus don't forget if you yanks had not come in, and Britain had fallen you would of been next...

but the war was won by all the allied army's not just you, the Russian well out doing everyone by the end of the war... with better tanks and better air planes and more men... so we owe a than you to them as well....

without Britain staying in the war they could of been no landing on the coast of France....
so it was helping everybody out in the long run...

ANDY F

The Russians won the second world war. It was they who took anything between 25 and 40 MILLION dead to defeat Nazism. Incidentally the Red Army regarded most lend lease equipment as inferior to their own, especially the tanks.
You are correct in saying it was an Allied victory in Normandy and that it was mainly US equipment that enabled it. That the campaign in Normandy took so long to complete (June '44 to May '45) is almost entirely attributable to the naievety and inexperience of Eisenhower as a FIELD commander. He was however an outstanding SUPREME commander.

David H

The Russians played a very large part in the defeat of the nazis.

chris h

Germany declared war on the USA so the question is not relevant. the one thing that is relevant about the USA and ww2 is that with the war going on and the Americans watching from afar knowing that they would likely get drawn into the war. they came up with the Sherman tank. they must have know what the Germans were using. 1000s of allied troops died becouse the weapons that should have been beter were no where near as good.

rebel

im english,i know germany had nearly slaughtered britain in the war and at the last moment usa stepped in and saved them,i believe the world would have been better if hitler had won. one world ruler,no more wars,no need for nuclear weapons.

wjs2oo7

The Allies Beat the Nazis, It was a team thing. WE can't really tell what would happen without the USA but it probabley won't have been pretty. Even RUssia relied on American help to fight the nazis.

Richie

its hard to say weather or not the Americans won the war they certainly didn't win it single handed and i think they know that. but if they hadn't of joined the war then Britons war effort would have be worse for it. we were all ready losing our grip on the empire and financially we were screwed. i think that if the Americans had not joined the war and Hitler had concentrated on just Europe and Africa and Left Russia alone then the ending could have been very different.

rss_beatty

The air war was won by britain without the aid of the us. Kudos to the RAF. In a regular invasion of Britain, from the nazi's, that would have been harder to defeat.

The wolf packs could have been stopped by better sonar, radar. The nazis were outmatched by it, and lost it. That was both british and american technology at its best.

It took all the allies to defeat hitler, Britain could have stood alone defensively, and held. But I believe it would have been suicide to try a d-day style landing, for them alone.

They needed time to raise the numbers of tanks, soldiers and equipement for an invasion, that could have taken years. Roosevelt realised this, and came up with the lend lease program.

MrGabby

IÂ´m not sure about the US, but we would certainly have succumbed to the Nazis had it not been for the USSR. A war on two fronts proved too much, and if you look at the Nazi loss of life on the eastern front, youÂ´d realise that they were the real heros in WW2.

The US just happens to have Hollywood, and a huge ego, fed by a largely uneducated populace.

latiti

Yeah, don't listen to those yankees. I'm Canadian and know damn well that Canada alone managed to win the war of 1812 against the states when they wanted to invade us. Of course, that war is probably not very well-known world-wide because USA lost; therefore, it's kept very "hush-hush". Had they won, those buggers would probably still be sticking it in our faces kind of like they are "oh say, doing it to Europe for WWII"

CLIVE H

Let's just put all of this into perspective shall we.

Back in the 1970s the surviving Nazi Generals were invited to the War Office in Whitehall to take part in a war game. The war game was designed and played to see if the Germans could have effectively mounted an invasion of the UK.

The Royal Air Force maintaine air superiority the Luftwaffe was destroyed.

The German officers who took part on the war game described the situation as 'impossible'. By the second day of their attempted invasion the Royal Navy had brought down their capital ships into the English Channel and were destroying everything afloat which was German.

The British had simply set fire to part of the English Channel and burnt thousands of German troops to death while they were still in their boats a couple of miles off shore.

You can find out more about this by reading the history of WW2 and how the British had already got in place a "secret army" in every small hamlet, village and town across the nation.

Just south of Croydon were massive under ground bunkers where an army was hidden. Had the Germans got that far, they would then have been trapped between the British army rising out of their bunkers at Croydon and the River Thames and the massed ranks of the Northern British Army [Celts] on the north bank of the Thames.

Death to the invaders.

R M

WWII was won with the help of the Russians and Americans. With out the two the Brits would not have won. For us Americans do not forget about Russia please, because with out their great sacrifice the Brits and Americans would have had a very terrible time with the full force of Germany.
Now for the Brits it never ceases to amaze me in their ignorance that the Americans were late to the war, I have never heard such rubbish, the Americans where not late to the European Theater of War, America was Natural at the onset of fighting in Europe. When fighting first broke out in Europe it must have seemed to the Americans at the time as just another war mongering Europeans doing what they do best and they probably did not want to get dragged into another WWI.
For the Americans there is a certain level of ignorance that with out the Americans the Brits where doomed, but they forget that without Russia both the Brits and Americans might have lost in WWII if Germany was not fighting Russia as well.

helene123

No, of course not. Without the US, we would all be speaking German now. Obviously,the allies won WW2 for the British..

BD M

i would say you are wight about this, my grandad fought in Africa and he allways said it wasn't untill they got American tanks,artillery,they could fight back on equal terms,would say one thing tho,we was not ready for the war,Germany was five years in front of us,so if politicians had not wavered, maybe we could of been more self sufficient.

johnny d

How would things have been different with out the other Allies fighting in Africa and southern Europe? As far defeating the Germans...could the USSR have done it alone? Maybe. Who knows? Maybe once they had fought to a good stalemate Hitler and Stalin would have made another deal to carve up Europe...but who knows... However, I think western Europe should be pretty darn happy they didnâ€™t. The US did play a large role in liberating Europe (and giving credit where it is due had the UK not stood its ground the US would never have been able to pull off d day), but the more important thing was that they protected it from Stalin and the Soviets after the war.

K. Marx iii

Another fellow Brit living the American dream. We have to be careful with history my man because Hollywood (a big media empire) is also a big player. We cannot underestimate the American war input and I don't wish to do so either, but it does not take a great war historian to work things out. And that is by deduction. Let us assume that the US decided (Pearl Habour not withstanding) not to join in in ww2. That would have left the Brits and their third world allies (Indians, Africans etc) and some European countries and the Russians,

And at the time the Russians were attacked they were making roughly 500 T52/54 tanks in a week. The war may have gone on for another six months but Russia would have eventually captured Berlin without too much help. What do you think?

Northern Lad

Who cares what you think!

sci

I have always enjoyed joint ops with the RAF, from the Falklands and Oman to Red Flag.

Heck I even host 3 Victor Tanker maintenance guys in my home during Bomb Comp 1983.

Glad to Help

A people seperated by a common language, Might have Been Sir Winston Churchill himself

Ret USAF SNCO

DoctressWho

What I do believe is that American troops would not have joined the fight until the Jananese attacked America.
I accept that America helped, but it was the efforts before America joined, which meant there was still something to fight for.
Without those efforts Americas ally on these Islands would have been under the Germans.
Britain on the other hand joined the war when another nation Poland was attacked. The Battle of Britain was in July to October 1940, America joined in December 1941.

bull

For crying out loud (which, you Brits did when whining for help); get over it. The RAF did nothing but make a little noise. Good for them, it helped. Toss some flowers on the graves of Americans that saved your pink arses, instead of the denial and (somehow) deluded belief that you did it on your own. Get real.

bull

And... why would the U.S. join a fight started by a bunch of blue blooded entititlement seekers? God save your ass? No. The U.S. saved your pitiful monarchy. They (your beloved two doors or or windows(sic)) started it, didn't they? (Yes, they did) (deny that, ingrate. again, put some flowers down where they belong)

bull

Certain level of ignorance? Pffffft! Keep devaluing the dollar, skid mark of history.

bull

History does not seem to register with history (in your welfare state of europe). Yes, the russians helped, with planes and supplies built AND flown over the ice cap from the skipping stone that is canada, from where else, but u.s.... Believe what you want, you'll meet your saviors, some day. The purgatory of denial you're in now, only lengthens your enlightenment.

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